KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Open access research is not only cited more often than research behind paywalls, these citations also come from a broader range of fields, institutions, and regions.
- This citation diversity is an important metric for exploring the true impact of research.
Open access publications have the potential to reach a wider audience, evidenced by increased citation counts compared with those behind paywalls. However, a recent large scale study by Dr Chun-Kai Huang and colleagues probes further, challenging the research community to look at the diversity of the readership behind those numbers.
In the largest study of its kind, the authors drew on 19 million research outputs and 420 million citation links, covering 2010–2019, to examine citation diversity. Their data reveal that:
- open access is indeed associated with higher citation counts
- open access consistently provides a ‘citation diversity advantage’ (in other words, open access publications are cited by researchers from a more diverse range of fields, institutions, and regions)
- this citation diversity advantage is stronger for green open access than for gold.
One concern raised by the study is that, while open access increases citation diversity for research from regions typically under-represented in the published literature (eg, North Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean), the advantage was more pronounced for those areas that already have greater visibility (eg, North America and Northern Europe). The authors question whether this is another instance in which the “rich get richer”, and urge the research community as a whole to advocate for equitable open access.
Open access consistently provides a ‘citation diversity advantage’.
Nevertheless, Dr Huang and colleagues put forward citation diversity as a key metric that looks beyond citation count to explore the impact of research. It would seem that if this measure was commonly used, and valued as highly as the impact factor, we could broaden the reach of medical research.
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